When It Poured, They Reigned: Our Five Favorite Hurricane Sandy Stars

The damage Hurricane Sandy wrought along the East Coast Monday and Tuesday merited hours and hours of news coverage – and if you’re anything like us, you watched it all.

Along those lines, you too might be looking for a little levity to balance the terrible images and stories the storm left in its aftermath. So we’d like to present some breakout stars from the past two days – chosen because they made us laugh, or because they were quick with a camera or just because they did a yeoman’s job in incredibly uncomfortable circumstances.

Go ahead and read through our list of breakout storm stars. Then, when you’re done, make sure to hit the comments to mention the ones we missed!

MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S ASL INTERPRETER | Lydia Callis, who interpreted New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s briefings for the deaf and hard of hearing, made the best. faces. ever. Kudos to you, Ms. Callis, because there’s not much that can perk up the Big Apple head honcho’s acerbic press briefings. Not much, that is, except for…

EL BLOOMBERG | … Bloomie’s Spanish summations at the end of every press conference, related in pretty much the worst Spanish accent we’ve ever heard. He’s been doing the Spancaps for a while now — would it kill the guy to throw in a rolled “r” here and there? [Skip ahead to 15:00 mark in the video below.]

NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE | He fielded calls from President Obama in his sleep! He said Election Day “doesn’t matter a lick to me” compared to the well-being of his constituents! He didn’t mince words about the stupidity of sticking around low-lying areas! He filled out that fleece! No matter what you think of the man’s politics, the Garden State gov was large and in charge during and after Sandy’s visit. The Boss would be proud.

QUICK-THINKING AMATEUR VIDEOGRAPHERS | What did the world do before smartphones? If it weren’t for the self-censoring guy who captured the apartment façade collapse (we wonder if his avoidance of the F-word was because he knew the clip would go viral) and the person whose crane-collapse video ruled the news, we might not have seen these crazy images as they happened.

THAT GUY | You know him. He’s surfing in the background of a live shot from an evacuated seaside neighborhood. He’s going for a stroll as the gusts reach 65 mph. He’s refusing to evacuate his home, despite the fact that water is lapping at his ankles. He’s likely to need the help of emergency personnel at some point. Plus side? He makes us feel really, really smart and responsible.